A really expensive piece of paper

Yesterday, I took the afternoon off to take Big A to see a doctor. He hurt his back while at work on Monday and because they have a two day maximum of continuous sick time before he will need to supply a doctors note rule, it was time for him to suck it up and enter a world that he hates. Big A isn't a big believer of doctors and hospitals and prefers to self-diagnose and use his over the counter options.

Because he doesn't have a specific doctor, we headed to the Urgent Care section of our nearby hospital. Since I had last been there with my mom 8 years ago, they got rid of that department and now they only have emergency. We could've gone through emergency but that would mean a higher copay and since it wasn't an emergency, we thought we would try our luck at one of their "off campus" sites that does feature an urgent care office.

So we drive about 30 minutes west and Big A goes up to the registration table and explains the problem and makes the mistake of including '...while at work'. We were then shuffled to the Business Health Services section which was this tiny half office off of a hallway and featured only about 8 chairs, all of which were full with men wearing shirts that seemed to show what they do for a living - a plumber, an ironworker, etc. Unbeknownst to us, you can only visit this section with the approval of your employer. Big A's back didn't really start to incapacitate him until later in the evening on Monday so his employer didn't know that he had injured himself on the job and hence, we had no approval. After he filled out about a dozen forms and they tried to contact someone in the main office of his employer in Minneapolis to no avail and the overly made up window pusher said that they couldn't see him, we left and drove even further east for 40 minutes until we arrived at the clinic that he always use to go to as a kid for the mandatory annual physicals before playing a sport.

As luck would have it, this clinic didn't take his insurance but at that point, we were quite happy to pay out of pocket. $100 later, he finally got his doctors note and a prescription for an anti-inflammatory that he doesn't intending on filling and using since Tylenol/Advil and rest is working well.

All of this and right before Sicko comes out too. What great timing.